As Rochester City Court Judge Leticia Astacio prepares to mount her last-ditch effort to stay on the bench before the state’s highest court on Wednesday, a new video of the judge circulating rapidly online shows a side of her the public has rarely seen.

Unlike so much of the footage of Astacio since her tragic saga began more than two years ago, in which she came off to many viewers as smug at best and unhinged at worst, the new video depicts a downright delightful Astacio.

It is a music video, a slow-moving, slickly-produced and hysterical parody of Beyoncé's 2003 smash hit, “Crazy in Love.”

The song is called “Crazy in Love … With the Judge” and stars a good-natured, confident and cool Astacio, who plays herself eluding a bug-eyed, spastic, gap-toothed stalker who looks like he was plucked from the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

The stalker character, named “Truck Norris, Stalker Texas Ranger,” is played by local actor and musician, Rob Campbell, who wrote the sketch and performed the song.

After spotting the judge from afar through a pair of military-grade binoculars, Truck pursues her as she goes about her business throughout the city and online.

He poses as a hairdresser to smell her hair. He knocks a convenience store clerk unconscious to wait on her and bait her with a six-pack of Guinness, which she politely declines. He spies on her over the internet while she shops for a pair of high heels.

At the piano, Truck wails through a set of grotesque “summer teeth” dentures — some are here, some are there. Maybe the judge got the best of me. Maybe she’s makin’ a fool of me. Uh oh, uh oh, Astacio.

Watching it, you can’t help but smile — not just at the hilarity of the concept, but at the mere fact that this embattled judge, barely clinging to her career, put herself out there and revealed her relatability.

“The feedback has been great,” Campbell said. “Even people who are disgusted by the judge are saying how great the video is.”

Campbell said Astacio contacted him after seeing an earlier sketch comedy video of his in which Truck is a reporter who spares no indignity to get the latest scoop on Astacio. He lurks outside her bedroom and follows her into a public bathroom.

Well, not just me, but what Elliott called “the negative news media” — traditional journalists as well as social media commentary.

“Truck kind of represented the negative news media,” Elliott said. “They love her and are infatuated with her.”

It’s not hard to see how someone might interpret news coverage of Astacio that way. I won’t mount a defense here other than to say one job of a free press is to hold people in power accountable, and judges are powerful people.

As for social media commentary on Astacio, it has been relentless and, for the most part, positively ugly.

Campbell said “Crazy in Love … With the Judge” was inspired by the hatred directed at Astacio on social media.

“People don’t know her at all,” Campbell said, “and that was kind of the idea behind doing (the video), to just offer a different perspective on the whole situation.”

“We wanted to show the human side of her,” he added. “Once you become a public figure, you’re no longer a human to the public.”

Both Campbell and Elliott, neither of whom knew Astacio before working with her, described her as “fun to be around,” a “regular person” and as having “amazing” acting chops. Elliott said most of Astacio’s scenes were filmed in one take.

News coverage of the upcoming oral argument before the Court of Appeals will undoubtedly unleash another tsunami of social media attacks on Astacio and the news media. Her critics and supporters alike will devour the coverage while claiming disdain for every column inch and second of airtime devoted to her.

Astacio is appealing the court to reconsider a recommendation by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct that she be removed from the bench.

In finding Astacio unfit to hold court, the commission cited her misdemeanor drunken driving conviction and subsequent failures to abide by the terms of her sentence, as well as her “engag(ing) in conduct so inimical to the role of a judge as to irredeemably undermine public confidence in her remaining on the bench.”

Odds are the court will find in favor of the commission, although it may be months before a decision is rendered.

The music video isn’t likely to sway the court one way or the other, nor should it.

But maybe it will influence how each of us views and treats Astacio going forward, when she’s no longer a judge and out of the public eye, as she pieces her life back together.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.